


light takes the tree

by likeoatmeal



Series: learn by going [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 08:13:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3202013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeoatmeal/pseuds/likeoatmeal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And if she spends her night’s watch thinking of Kíli, of their last parting on Raven Hill, if she worries her fingers over the runestone she still keeps and the words she did not say, the words she might say now if given the chance, then that is her choice as well. (Post-BotFA, Kili lives!AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	light takes the tree

She looks for him. In the raging storm of bodies—armor and blades, blood and death—Tauriel looks for him.

(And she thinks of how mercilessly Kíli will tease her when he learns, imagines how he will grin pleased and smug to learn she looked for him. “So eager to save me again already?” he will joke and she will allow herself to laugh this time, to smile and and _and_ \--if she can only find him.)

She finds him when the battle is over at long last, as the living pick through the dead. Already the ravens of Erebor raise their shrill voices for Thorin, king under the mountain, and the dwarves gather to bear their fallen back to their dark halls. Everywhere the snow is black with goblins’ blood.  

She finds Kíliat the foot of a ruined watchtower, his brother’s golden head resting on his lap. There are bloody handprints on Fíli’s pale face, on the backs of his hands where they lie flat on his still chest. (Durin’s blood and goblin’s blood, Kíli’s hands are stained with both.)

“He told me to go. I should not have left him.”

Kíli breathes but there is something in his eyes when looks at her that was not there before. It is as though he does not see her at all, as though he sees nothing. If she speaks she does not hear herself at all over the pounding over her own heart inside her ears. She does not approach him, truly does not know _how_. His grief bleeds freely, a wound she does not know how to staunch.

He breathes, yes, but Tauriel fears she has lost him nonetheless.

 

-

 

She stays with him. Any suggestion to move is met with silence, and she would not attempt to remove his brother’s body without his permission. The sun continues its steady climb, glitters on the snow topped hill though there is little warmth to be had from it.

Perhaps they’ll remain here, forgotten by all else, enchanted in their sorrow and silence, like figures from the tales of old. But they are not forgotten and too soon others come, their footfall heavy in the snow. She recognizes him from Laketown, though his hat is clutched in his hand now, his knuckles white. He moves past her with little more than a glance. He kneels besides Kíli, obscures him from view. When he speaks it is in their tongue, deep and rolling echoes of places deep beneath the earth.  Whatever he says unlocks Kíli’s voice, a dreadful sound, a blade’s edge that slips into her side, the memory of which she will carry as a wound for the rest of her life. “Uncle.”

She moves then, wills her legs to carry her forward until she is besides him. She reaches for his bloodied hand, clasps it tightly within her own. He weeps then and she does not let go until others come and lead him away.

 

-

 

 “Dain will be King Under the Mountain,” the halfling tells her, eyes red from too many tears and not enough sleep, “Kíli has refused.” He seems at a loss now that the wizard has been drawn into a meeting with Bard’s men and some dwarves from the Iron Hills. There is work to be done but she allows herself to linger, to listen while he is willing to talk. She has heard too little from out the Lonely Mountain.

He scratches at the nape of his neck.  “It’s caused quite the upset among the dwarves.” He kicks at a pebble with one bruised foot, the hair knotted and dirty, a peculiar creature if ever she has seen one. “Thorin would be—“ his voice trembles, “outraged. He could be very disagreeable, as I’m sure you know.” He offers her a weary smile, confused and very small. Tauriel does not understand how he arrived at this place. In all truth, she does not know how any of them have arrived here.

She does not know how to reply; lifts her eyes from his tired face to look across the fields. Through the smoke of the still burning pyres she can make out the gates of Erebor, an open shadow at the base of the mountain.

Besides her the hobbit sighs, fidgets on his stone seat, “I used to wish this whole affair would just be over, y’know. I thought things would return to normal, just as they used to be—now I’m not sure they can.”

And she understands his meaning, with the same certainty that drove her to pursue the dwarves outside the boundaries of her guard, the certainty that bid her to stay while the surviving orcs fled Lake Town, _athelas_ clutched tight between her fingers.

 

-

 

“You can return Tauriel. You have fought honorably. My father will forgive you if you ask his pardon—” There is a desperation in Legolas’ face she does not recognize. But there is no comfort Tauriel can offer him, no part left of her that pretends things are as they were before, when they were younger and the woods were yet green. For all their long years they were merely children chasing one another among the trees. She takes his hand then as she would never dare to touch him before.

She will miss him.

“I cannot.” His fingers tighten around hers, squeeze hard and afraid and she freezes on the precipice of an irrevocable truth, but she does not waver. “I do not want his pardon.”

His face falls, a ruin for all its beauty, and she clasps his hand as tightly as he holds hers before he releases her hand entirely. “Tauriel, you cannot stay for a dwarf.”

She will miss him but he does not understand, cannot understand that her heart began wandering the world beyond their borders centuries before Durin’s sons ever wandered onto the Elven Road. (And if she spends her night’s watch thinking of Kíli, of their last parting on Raven Hill, if she worries her fingers over the runestone she still keeps and the words she did not say, the words she might say now if given the chance, than that is her choice as well.)

 She shakes her head, “I know _mellon_ , but I can stay for myself.”

 

-

 

Winter is hard on the survivors of Laketown. All around her the people despair, worry that they escaped dragon fire only to die in the cold ruins of a long-abandoned city.

 Few ask why she alone remains when all her kinsmen have gone. Perhaps it is a mark of gratitude for she does what she can to help. She leads those who will follow into the sparse wilderness for whatever game might be found, shares her knowledge of the plants they find growing and informs them of those that will return in the spring. It is a plentiful land, she tells them, it will take care of them once the wounds of war have healed, if they tend it.

She can still recall Dale in its glory, the houses full and the markets crowded, though she only saw it twice before Smaug came out of the north. She tells those tales to any who find comfort in them, for the second children of Ilúvatar are short-lived but not without strength.

And when Tauriel has taught them what she can she listens and learns what they have to teach her. Tauriel learns to thatch rooftops, how to level beams for supports and weave baskets of stiff yellow grass that can carry water. Her hands calloused from decades of swordplay and bowshots blister in new places, harden anew from her newest duties. The days pass quickly in Dale, they seem to fly away one from the other, as though liberated out in the open air in a way they could never be beneath the thick canopy of Mirkwood.     

“Is this a penance or a prize?” Bard asks one day when he finds her sorting dried herbs outside the building designated for healing. The air is cool and sharp, the sunlight bleak in the pale sky overhead. A fairer day than they’ve had of late, though perhaps colder than the people of the town are willing to tolerate.

He does not repeat his question, and she wonders now if it was a jest. Of all the inhabitants of this new Dale, he might be the closest to a friend. He has proved an honorable man, Bard the Dragon Slayer. Bard who will not take the title of king nor claim lordship over these men and women who look to him for answers. Bard who calls for councils and delegates duties and would have each person take part. “We have had enough masters.” He extends the same respect to her, invites Tauriel’s advise in his negotiations with the Woodland Realm and smiles when she tries to answer the unending questions of his children (though that might be more at her expense than a token of friendship).

“There are emissaries from the mountain in town.” He begins, his eyes betraying nothing, “I believe you’re familiar with one of them. He was one of the dwarves who passed through Laketown. He asked if you were indeed the elf of Dale.”Bard grins, his solemn face brightened by his amusement, “I told him you were. He wished to know if you would meet with him before he departed.”

It is only the years that keep her face clear of surprise, though they do nothing to lessen the pounding of her heart, the rush of blood in her veins. But she will need many more years still to keep the disappointment from her features when she enters the meeting hall and does not find him there.

She does not know the dwarf who asked for her. He bows and introduces himself as Ori, son of Rori. He does not stand out in her memories of the company in Mirkwood, shorter than Kíli and softer beneath her eye. She does not make the mistake of underestimating him, knows that despite all appearances, he is a hero of Erebor, tested by steel and fire. His eyes are bright, sharp but without cruelty as they study her from head to heel.

She greets him with equal respect, hopes to keep her confusion in check when she says, “Bard told me you wished to meet. How might I assist you my lord?”

Ori’s face blooms pink beneath his sandy beard. “Oh! I’m no lord. Hardly even a scribe, not ‘til I’ve finished my masterwork anyhow.” He speaks slowly, all his words carefully parceled out, worries his fingers over the tightly-knit cuff of his glove, tips his head. He does not remind her of Kíli, not in color or form or tone, and his absence stings sharper for it. “Your lot took my pages.” He says good-naturedly, “Which is for the best I s’pose, saved them from the river. Dori says no respectable guild would have taken them with fish guts all over.” He smiles, not unkindly, and Tauriel knows she is not the only one nervous at this meeting.

“I would intercede on your behalf Master Journeyman, if I could—”

Ori’s eyes widen with a swift shake of his head that sets the beads decorating the braids on the right side of his head clinking against one another. “You misunderstand me ma’am, “he holds his hands up plaintively, “that’s not the favor I’ve come to ask of you.”

 

-

 

The guardhouse, or what is left of it, is as easy to find as Ori promised it would be. An outcrop of the mountain’s gate, it would have been impossible to see once, a guards’ post to give early warning of any who might approach over the open field. The stones still stand—dwarven stonework, built to endure—but there is lichen climbing along the foundations, creeping vines sprout their leaves slowly upward, digging into miniscule cracks in the bedrock. It looks a lonely place in the grand shadow of the Lonely Mountain.

There is less to recommend it inside, a barren space, cold and damp, that makes the rooms she keeps in the new settlement seem a luxury by comparison. A single bedroll in a far corner, lanterns on the floor besides a mess of maps, a small hearth sits empty despite winter hanging heavy in the air.

But she finds him there, just as she was promised, bent over a map in the low light. It is the only place she can be.

He does not hear her approach, does not look up until she is standing in the loose ray of sunlight falling across the floor. Tauriel does not know if it is a trick of the light or her own longing, but for a startled moment he is himself again, as she knew him before, his dark eyes soft and a shade of affection she could not name to herself, not before.

But it flickers and disappears, like a candle left exposed to a strong wind. He seems to recoil, draw inward and shrink away from her, jaw clenched tight.

 He juts his chin forward, “Did they send for you?” there’s a challenge in his stare she meets unflinchingly. Fear has kept her away too long already.

Tauriel does not know what he reads in her silence but he shrugs, uneasy, “I do not need a nursemaid.”

“That is well for I make a poor nurse. I’m sure you remember.” Her attempt does little to lighten the mood, but Kili drops her stare in favor of his map. But he does not tell her to go, does not stop her when she sits opposite him on the stone floor.

Silence hangs as a shroud over them, and Tauriel wishes, not for the first time, she had greater skill with words. That she could maneuver them as easily as she does on a training field, that she could wield them with the same certainty with which she moves her blades, perilous and sure.

“What are you doing here Tauriel?”

She did not know his brother well.

He never spoke to her in Mirkwood where she was his captor and guard, though she heard him from time to time when she would take watch. He would sing sometimes, short and nonsensical rhymes in Common that would incite laughter from the others that echoed off the stones.  Once Kíli had admitted to missing his fiddle, and she could have sworn she heard a snort from Fíli’s cell. Tauriel had wanted to know more than time permitted.

What she does know is this: The care with which he’d touched Kíli’s brow after she’d bound his leg, and the nervous quirk of Fíli’s smile when he’d asked, “What would you do without someone to keep you out of trouble?”

What she knows is the sight of Fíli’s face in Laketown, while Kíli slept and the smell of _athelas_ lingered sweet in the room. "You have saved my brother's life tonight,” he’d said, bowing low in the manner of his people, “I will be at your service for all that is left of mine." She had not known him but in that moment he stood before her, humbled and yet regal, and she knew with time he would prove a good lord.   

_I did not know him but he loved you._

The runestone weighs heavy in her pocket and her heart aches within her breast, pierced by a surety she cannot deny. That she has no wish to deny and no reason to.

 She touches him before she can stay her hand, his chin rough beneath her fingertips. He startles beneath her touch, looks up without the need of guidance. What had she come here to do? Not deliver him to the mountain against his will. Convince him to return with her to Dale perhaps, but to what end? Will they remain there to watch after the children of children who run now, will they keep a vigil as they grow and pass away to memory? No that is not for either of them.

His palm is coarse but warm as she remembers when she presses the runestone into his hand. How long ago it seems now, that grey morning on the shore of the lake, ash and smoke still thick in the air, the night in Mirkwood farther away still.

But it is not a fireside tale or a lay, something faraway and unobtainable, this is hers. Who will tell her this is not a chance to do what she did not do before.

“You asked me once if I would follow you. I will follow you now, wherever you choose to go, if you wish it.”

He searches her face but she does not know what he looks for, only what she can offer and hopes it will be enough. “That is my promise.”

 

-

 

End

**Author's Note:**

> In answer to the question no one asked: what's Tauriel up to during 'up a winding stair'. I'm taking liberally from movie canon and book canon, as seen in the the stay in Mirkwood being extended such as it was in the book. The Battle of the Five armies is itself different from the movie: Fili still dies but Tauriel doesn't arrive on Raven Hill until after the battle is done, so Kili kills the oncoming goblins in his rage. I have no idea how Ori became a part of this story, but he sort of showed up one day and I thought of all the dwarves he was young enough to take a chance on talking to an elf.
> 
> I still hope to one day write a story where everything isn't angst and pain and Kili and Tauriel are actually off traveling Middle-earth. Goals for 2015.
> 
> Title once again from The Waking by Theodore Roethke. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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